Webinar: Getting to know our “cell mates”: A practical approach to microbiome analysis through a biostatistician’s lens.

The Statistical Society of Australia is pleased to announce the following webinar:

Getting to know our “cell mates”: A practical approach to microbiome analysis through a biostatistician’s lens.

·         When: 19 June 2020 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM (AEST)

·         Location: via Zoom, check local time, time stated is AEST

At one point it was believed that we have 10 times more bacteria than human cells leading to the claim that we are more bacteria than human. It is thus natural that we try and learn more about our living arrangements with our mates. Microbiome research is one of the many fields studying the relationship between humans and bacterial. The field was given a boost in 2008 with the birth of human microbiome project, which facilitates characterisation of the human microbiota to further our understanding of how the microbiome impacts human health and disease. Since then, studies collecting samples for characterisation of microbiome in different area of the body have increased exponentially. So far, a lot has been learnt on how our well-being (or not) is influenced by microbiome. Recent interesting findings include the suspected link between microbiome and autism spectrum.

This webinar will be a walk-through of stages of extracting insights from microbiome data. Using a practical example, we will start with raw reads from microbiome samples and transform them into information that can be readily used by policy makers and digestible by the general population. Focus will be on the basic concepts and implementation rather than technical details. References will be provided for those interested in technical details and further reading.

Topics to be discussed will include:

• Processing of raw reads.
• Hypothesis definition: Alpha diversity vs Beta diversity.
• Exploration and visualization of microbiome data.
• Statistical methods for analysis of microbiome data and their implementation in R.

About the presenter
Dr Elasma Milanzi obtained her Doctor of Science in mathematics (Biostatistics) from Universiteit Hasselt, in Belgium. Her areas of interest include; methods and applications for mixed models, survival analysis, dimension reduction and microbiome data. She currently does independent statistical consulting and training, is an honorary research fellow in Biostatistics with the university of Melbourne and heads the Analytics and Research team at the start-up company, Halogen Health. She has more than 5 years’ experience in lecturing biostatistics subjects to postgraduate students at top universities in Australia and Europe. She became interested in microbiome analysis during her collaboration with the Allergy and lung health unit at the University of Melbourne.

To register

This event is  free but you will need to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

The webinar will be recorded and made available on the webinar page of the SSA website in due course.

If you have any questions, please contact Marie-Louise Rankin.